Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the apparently clear division between children's and adult literature, not only with respect to Kipling's work, but also in more general terms. It offers readings of certain of Kipling's children's' texts as part of a process of reconsidering extant critical assumptions and practices around ideas of childhood, identity, and language. The book presents how children's literature criticism has come into dialogue with post-colonial criticism in recent years and it addresses the impact and effects of this cross-pollination and the questions and problems still to be raised around the constructions of childhood evident in both forms of criticism. The book focuses on critical assumptions about authorship' and biography by addressing critical assertions about the oral quality' of Kipling's work for children.